


A Broken Wing

by QueenKirriana



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen, Modern AU, Non-specific ending, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 01:15:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2794406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenKirriana/pseuds/QueenKirriana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short story Modern AU written during a school assessment. Told like a Hemingway style story of the son about his mother's struggle with her mental illness and the confusion it inspires in the boy as he tries to guess what's going on in the conversation his parents are having where his mother's constant metaphors and distant replies have a deeper meaning that he can't figure out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Broken Wing

After pulling on his uniform, the boy went downstairs into the kitchen for breakfast. He sat down at the table and noticed that his mum was sat across from him. Usually she was all over the place, moving food and cutlery between the kitchen area and the table. Today the father was running around like mad, bumbling and dropping things as he went. He bumped his head into an overhead cabinet as he reached for the cereal box while trying not to let his tie fall into his eggs on the stove-top. The man muttered under his breath and sighed, turning around and waving at his son with a smile.  
“Hey son.”  
“Hey dad. Morning mum,” the boy said a little louder over the clanging sounds his father was making with the cutlery.  
“Hello Sebastian.” the mother replied distantly.  
“Who’s taking me to school?” the boy enquired.  
“You are, Andy. I’m going into work,” the woman said as she tapped her spoon with a finger.  
“Marian, you’re not meant to be doing anything too stressful. You’re meant too-“  
“She said to rest. Working is resting. It takes me inside away from all the dark clouds that are in the grey sky. They cloud the path of the hawk.”  
The boy took the bowl of cereal his dad handed to him while peering out the window his mother was staring at, “There aren’t any clouds in the sky at all mum. Where’s the hawk? I don’t see it.”  
The woman looked down at her own bowl and started jabbing her spoon at the glistening white reflections of light bouncing off the window.  
“Hey dad what flavour is this cereal?”  
“Chocolate fusion, son. Like it?”  
“It’s stale. It’s black and hard, not like what its supposed to be,” the woman brushed her hair back behind her ears.  
“What do you mean mum? We only got this cereal yesterday, it tastes fine to me?” the boy asked.  
“Then it’s the milk all right?! All of it is stale! Take it away from me!” she pushed the bowl with a great force that it slid completely off the table and smashed into pieces on the floor.  
As the man bent down to clean up the mess of broken china and spilt milk the woman frowned and murmured “That’s not the only thing to break without a way to fix it. Like the hawk flying outside, a wing is broken and it can no longer fly.” The husband’s face dropped from sympathetic and threatened to turn into a scowl.  
Without looking back at her husband she turned to her son “Seb that saying, “No use in crying over spilt milk?” Remember that. Sometimes the milk has gone mouldy and died. Like how a plant wilts over time. All things must die or spill or go bad. Never let anyone tell you that you can’t cry over them. Don’t you dare because you will. You will child.”  
The child looked at his mother, wondering what brought this on. With a confused smile he replied “Okay mum. I’ll remember that for you.”  
The boy went back to eating his cereal in silence, cautious not to do anything that would upset his mother. He walked into the hallway to grab his school backpack to put his lunch in when he heard his parents start shouting at each other. The child stood watching them wondering what their words meant. “What does mum mean?” he asked himself. The boy had been up at his grandparent’s until the night before. Everything had been normal until this morning. He sat and waited as the man started to shout at the woman for the way she was talking to their son. She retorted “I am his mother no matter what happens to this family.”  
There was a pause and the look on the man’s faced relaxed slightly and tensed up again before he said “Exactly.” and left the room, storming off upstairs. The child moved himself back into the kitchen as quietly as possible, feeling his mothers eyes blazing into the back of his neck.  
He shuffled around, grabbing his lunch before turning around to the woman and asking “Mum why are you staring?”  
She looked surprised and turned her attention back to the view from the window. The boy put his lunch box into his bag and sat back down at the table.  
“Mum. Please don’t argue with dad. You love each other-”  
“Love doesn’t fix everything,” his mother snapped scrunching up her face.  
“No but it’s a powerful tool and I don’t get why you’re using it to hurt each other,” the child finished like she never spoke at all. “I know something happened while I was at Nan and Pops, something went wrong. I don’t understand but I know you need time. You have a lot of time mum,” the boy stopped talking.  
“Time is what I didn’t have. Time is a slow spiralling descent into the abyss. Time is a reminder of every dark day that overshadows our lives. Time will cause that hawk to fall from the sky and die. Time is a cruel thing,” she didn’t look at him, and her son followed her constantly moving gaze but saw nothing in the sky. “Time is what either teaches a hawk to fly or fall from its nest and die. Time is what decides if the bird catches the worm. Time is a cruel thing.”  
“I really don’t understand. Our last name is Hawke but I didn’t realize that you liked them that much to keep mentioning them,” the boy said watching his mother’s gaze.  
She looked at him “Why would you? You’re just a child.”  
“Right now you’re the child...” the boy stated looking away from the window.  
“Sebastian Hawke, never speak to me like that ever again. I am your mother no matter what happens to this family!” She snapped at him, moving her hand as if to grab his arm but made no movements towards him.  
“Exactly,” the boy replied with the same tone as his father and stood up as his mother gaped in shock. She closed her mouth as the man called out to him and opened the front door nodding towards it. The boy put his backpack on his back and kissed his mother on the forehead and said “A family is what makes a heart whole. We’re your family mum. We are right here. We are whole” the child left the woman sitting there and left for school with the man. The boy couldn’t know that those were to be the last words he spoke to his mother. He would always wonder when in that same kitchen, if it was the words or the unknown meaning behind them. The man told him that it was something that no one but the woman herself could’ve known and without her around, they would never know. He wasn’t expected to understand and he probably never would but the way the woman had talked of hawks inspired something in him. The boy felt like it was the last thing he had left of her. He started calling himself Hawke and everyone around him started to follow suit. One thing he knew the woman forgot was that even though a hawk will die, Hawke’s are reborn.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure what the ending for Marian is in this story. I believe it should be left up to the reader to determine what she did as she left her husband and child's lives.


End file.
